201–210 of 249 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just abhor the EU and everything it stands for. I can't wait to see how Europe comes crashing down.
I love EU and everything it stands for (even if the execution is not always perfect). Why do you want to see Europe crashing down?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unelected bureaucrats who think they are above the citizens, too much reach, too much influence, insistence in regulating every industry and every activity. This can only end in a can a cashless mass-surveillance social credit system dystopia even worse than China. Give it a few years.
Give me a break. Parlimant is elected directly, commission is made of PMs of the member states government, that were also elected. If feels like hearing Brits touting those 'unelected bureaucrats' while at the same time having unelected PM and house of Lords... no voting system is perfect nor the EU is perfect but this is one of the dumbest arguments there. As for policies - they are quite often very pro-citizen and…
The policies lately are pro surveillance and pro hardcore socialism.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Salaries in Germany (and other European countries) are lower than in the US because German citizens receive a lot of benefits through government budgets that US citizens can only dream of. healthcare, essentially free higher education on a level easily comparable to most U.S. universities, better quality primary and secondary education, free or low cost (depending on the state) childcare from age 2-3, comparatively d…
> (and it is mostly luck, don't kid yourself) This is a big misconception. It's mostly not luck. Different societies can and do focus on different things. The US focuses a lot more on innovation and progress, and invents and pioneers a lot of the things that other societies, who spend their money on other things, then get to benefit from. Sadly, some of the occupants of the latter also taking a moral stand against th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And I've seen what solidarity (without the scary quotes) did to Sweden (and other Nordics), Germany, etc. as societies for the working class. A union is not a guild, it's not about creating barriers of entry like in law or medicine, unsure why you conflate those concepts. Perhaps it's from ignorance, or perhaps from the fears that the ruling class instilled into you.
I've seen what socialist governments did in Sweden: income taxes that can reach 72%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Sweden
The two reasons I disagree with publishing salaries and "ranges" are that a) the implicit collusion creates mean reversion that disadvantages talent, who can afford to leave and go where they are valued and b) the values behind it presume that a job is something paternalistic granted by a manager in return for supplication, and not due consideration for value offered. Together these create a race to the bottom in off…
> Together these create a race to the bottom How does that work? Say 10 companies are competing for the best talent. All of them offer the public going rate, except 1 which offers 10% more. Guess where the talent is going? To the one that offers 10% more, and now the other 9 companies are incentivized to pay more if they want to attract top talent. I don't understand how secretive salaries benefit anyone other than p…
If I can get the same talent for less, I will buy that. However, if that talent costs less because their government has imposed market conditions that remove the persons opportunity to earn closer to what I would pay them based on the value of their work to me, then I am exploiting an arbitrage of talent in that closed and manipulated market vs. adjacent ones.
It must be nice to read this thread and be confident that not only will people in tech still work for less than they are worth, but they will even assert the obligation of others to do so.
Facebook employees have an average revenue per employee well above a million dollars, is a web developer working for them only worth the $10/h that other employers are have agreed to offer them because they are from a poor area that enforces these policies, or does this developer earn an equity portion of the millions in value they are creating? Even if it were $100/h, that only seems attractive because most people don't understand contracts, negotiations, numbers, or economics.
If you want to know who wins, it's political parties who sell out their populations to global companies by using manipulations like this to suppress the value of their local labour market, and when they attract more foreign companies exploiting this, they get the revenue to spend on getting re-elected by the smaller coalitions they are paying off with the proceeds. Maybe this would have been less controversial if they had marketed it as, "Your bargaining power will be sold out to global corporations and you will be happy."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>ASML is in the EU, are you going to say they can't do tech? My god, if I had a biscuit crumb for every time someone on HN mentioned ASML as an example of European tech dominance, I would have died from obesity several times over. The simple fact that ASML (and sometimes Spotify) is the only name that comes to mind when discussion EU tech dominance, speaks volumes. (I'm European BTW) Where is EU's iPhone? Or Android?…
> Where is EU's iPhone? Or Android? Or Windows? Or Intel? Or AWS? Or Office365? Or Google? Or ChatGPT? Or Xbox? Or Steam? Or Netflix? Or Nvidia? Or Micron? Or AMD? Some examples of Eu based tech would be: Nokia killed by MS, an US company. Skype. SAP. ARM, UiPath, Bitdefender. But is true, we are unable to compete with US on tech. Part of the reasons is that we don't have good startup ecosystem and hubs, we don't hav…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Where is EU's iPhone? Or Android? Or Windows? Or Intel? Or AWS? Or Office365? Or Google? Or ChatGPT? Or Xbox? Or Steam? Or Netflix? Or Nvidia? Or Micron? Or AMD? Some examples of Eu based tech would be: Nokia killed by MS, an US company. Skype. SAP. ARM, UiPath, Bitdefender. But is true, we are unable to compete with US on tech. Part of the reasons is that we don't have good startup ecosystem and hubs, we don't hav…
ARM is not EU
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live and work in Sweden, even though worker solidarity here is almost at an all-time low it's still quite ingrained in society, it's one of the engines of making this society more trustworthy, less unequal and all the benefits that stems from that. > All Germany's solidarity isn't getting their salaries up to US wages; the money isn't there. Because USA's wages are the massive oddball here, not the standard. And to…
> I live and work in Sweden, even though worker solidarity here is almost at an all-time low it's still quite ingrained in society, it's one of the engines of making this society more trustworthy, less unequal and all the benefits that stems from that. By "worker solidarity" you mean laws enforced by socialist bureaucrats? Equality of outcomes, no matter the merits or the work put in? Is that a sustainable model? Doe…
And I guess you don't know much about Sweden in general if your follow-up question is "Does it allow for economic and technical progresses being made?"...
It's incredible how many people here are against transparency and a better labor market providing more information to the supplier side. Lord knows companies have probably 80% of the leverage in the job market. Tech people are doomed not by AIs, but by lack of solidarity, raw greed and lack of long term vision.
Not to state the obvious but the fact that this commend is the most upvoted in this thread kind of proves one of the premises wrong. It seems that a lot of people are for transparency (I certainly am) despite them not being too vocal about it.
And there were about 5-10 of them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love EU and everything it stands for (even if the execution is not always perfect). Why do you want to see Europe crashing down?
As an european who also had the "pleasure" of living through communism, the EU is becoming super communist and socialist with a ferocity that even the soviets lacked.
If anything I would argue that Communist/early post-Communist generations in these countries are tainted by a ferocious anti-Socialist streak, which is kind of natural (people reach for the other extreme due to all the Communist abuse).
In my country, Romania, this leads to private development (real estate, businesses, etc) that completely ignores the public domain. Only in the past 5-7 years have people started to wizen-up that the Libertarian paradise is actually hell.
Developed countries in Europe are a lot more mellow regarding capitalism and socialism.
Random example from a supposed hyber-bastion of capitalism, Switzerland. A friend of mine working for Google found an awesome apartment close to work, super cheap. He had to provide a salary slip and the owner - either on his own or due to legislation - basically said: you make too much for this, let people with lower incomes get it, you get an apartment fitting your salary.
That blew my little post-Communist mind. The action practically screamed Communism to me.
You can call it a sort of awakening. You can't build everything on your own. We reach the stars by working together.